There is a lot of debate about a good buttercream and everyone has their tricks. Mine is to dilute the butter with some plain vegetable shortening.

The health food people in my life right now are fainting dead away. But MOST buttercreams are not just butter. When it’s all butter it has a cloying taste that sticks to the roof of your mouth. You need to add in some milk, vanilla extract and shortening.

I went to a wedding last night and now having become somewhat of an expert on frosting, I could tell that the one they used for our individual wedding cakes was about 90% shortening. It was hard to eat.

In fact, most places you buy a cake are going to have closer to a 60/40 ratio of shortening to butter.

Don’t try to avoid it. Just eat it in moderation and you will be fine.

I personally like how a piped frosting looks on things i’m going to sell or show off, but really you can easily take a knife or offset spatula and smear it on.

Vanilla Buttercream

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1/3 cup vegetable shortening

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/8 tsp (or pinch) table salt

Up to 1/4 cup whole milk or heavy whipping cream (whatever you have on hand)

Up to 8 cups powdered (confectioners) sugar

Directions:

Making a buttercream is about adding in EVERYTHING slowly and making it the right consistency and taste for your preferences.

Put the butter, shortening and vanilla extract into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whir it on up.

Add in the salt while it’s going.

Stop and scrape down the sides. You want the mixture smooth and well blended.

Slowly add in powdered sugar, 1/4 cup at a time.

Add in a few tbsp milk.

Slowly add in more powdered sugar.

Get it to a consistency where it is light and fluffy and easily spreadable, but not runny or falling apart.

Remember, you can always add but you can never subtract!

Put finished frosting into a piping bag, or just use an offset spatula and put it on your cupcakes.

Well it’s that time of year again! Time for my favorite holiday: Passover. A time to gather with family and friends, eat, drink a ton of wine (Manischewitz if you can handle it) and basically enjoy one of the best foods in the world, Matzo Ball soup. Oh, I will be posting the soup sometime this week. Don’t you worry. But until then, it’s time to put away the flour and the leavening agents and get down to some kosher for Passover dessert.

Every year I try to experiment with new recipes for the Passover Seder. Although the tried and true will be making an appearance on the blog this week, I wanted to start off by bragging about what should be an amazing kosher for Passover torte (cake) I made.

It is an intermediate level cake, only because it does require folding, weighing of ingredients and a steady hand.

It is rather quick to make, and the frosting is so yummy I may actually use it again in place of a typical ganache. I think it would be even more amazing if I made it with an orange simple syrup instead of a regular one.

A few notes. First, make sure when you separate the eggs, you don’t let any yolk into the whites. Keep those yolks because next week I am going to tackle a hollandaise sauce.

Second, when folding, only add your almond meal mixture in a bit at a time. Too much and you’ll deflate your whites more than you want to. So don’t be like me and get impatient. Folding is about patience.

Also, don’t make your chocolate frosting too early. It actually goes much quicker than it seems, and you still want warm chocolate frosting to make spreading easier. Mine got a little too settled and was more difficult to make pretty. So to counteract that, I would start once the cake comes out of the oven.

The timing is way off on the original recipe. I did mine in 20 minutes, and it was perfect and golden brown. So make sure you rotate the pans at 10 minutes, then start checking at 20.

Another trick for cake decorating is to place strips of parchment paper underneath the first layer so that the platter will be clean after you frost. Just wiggle the paper strips out from under the finished cake.

Also, you can make this cake a day or two ahead like I did, just tent it with foil and wax paper (so it doesn’t stick) and leave it at room temperature. I actually think it will set better.

I am so excited to try this tonight. It is going to be intensely sweet and delicious, and hopefully everyone will enjoy!

Flavoring of your choice, such as 1/2 teaspoon orange oil or extract, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, almond or other extract

20 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, chopped or chocolate chips

1 cup sliced almonds, toasted (at 350 degrees for 7 to 9 minutes on a tray, stirring once or twice)

Directions:

For the cake:

Position an oven rack in the top and lower third of oven and preheat oven to 325°F.

Prepare 2 cookie sheets with silpats (recommended highly if you don’t have them) or parchment paper.

Place almonds, 1 cup sugar and coarse salt in a food processor (you can skip the food processor, however, if you use an equivalent weight of almond meal or ground almonds, just mixing the ingredients in a bowl) and blend until finely ground.

Spread 1/4 of macaroon batter to form a rectangle. Repeat, making 2 cakes per tray. You can eyeball like I did if you don’t mind messy layers. Otherwise, the original recipe calls for drawing 4 4×12 rectangles on the parchment paper (pen/pencil side down) and filling in the rectangles.

Bake macaroon layers until golden and almost firm to the touch in the center, reversing sheets halfway through. About 20-25 minutes.

Cool macaroons on their sheets on a cooling rack.

For the Frosting:

Simmer 1/2 cup of water and sugar in a medium saucepan until sugar dissolves.

Measure 10 tablespoons from this and either discard the rest of save it for another use. Put the 10 tablespoons syrup back in the saucepan and add flavoring of your choice.

Bring the syrup back to a boil and add chocolate to the saucepan. Remove from heat and let sit for one minute, then stir the chocolate until smooth.

This should yield a medium-thick frosting, good for spreading. If yours is on the thin side, you can let it cool for 5 or 10 minutes until it is a good spreading consistency.

Assemble the cake:

If needed due to spreading, carefully trim your macaroon layers back to their intended rectangular sizes.

Place one macaroon layer on a long platter. Spread frosting evenly over. Top with another macaroon layer. Spread frosting evenly over. Repeat 1 more time then top with last macaroon layer, flat side up. Spread remaining frosting over top and sides of torte.